Foreword
by Gail S. Halvorsen, Col USAF (Ret)
The Berlin Candy Bomber
I have read many books by those who were associated with Berlin during and after World War II but none that expresses so well the human dimension over such a span of time. Inge brilliantly covers the war years, years after the war, being under the Soviet thumb for eighteen months, the Airlift experience, and the period leading up to her immigration to America. This exceptional work is wrapped up in a blanket of gratitude born of terrible sacrifice. All the above is a first–hand, on–the–scene account.
It is a must reference document for educational institutions and community libraries, historical organizations, German-American clubs and similar organizations. It is also an excellent read for inquisitive minds searching for the meaning of life and the power of determination.
My first flight to Berlin was early in July 1948. I turned the wings of my heavily laden C-54 Skymaster over the bleak ruins of that once magnificent city and headed for Tempelhof Central Airport. I couldn’t imagine how over two million West Berliners could survive in that moonscape. I had 20,000 pounds of flour in the back end. That would help some, but it would take a lot more. Stalin had cut off all means of livelihood for the West Berliners—coal, food, electricity, everything! We were called on short notice to feed our former enemy. At first I didn’t feel too good about that. Those were faceless people until I got to know some of them. Most were women and children. They had to have food or starve, but they wanted freedom more than flour. We had both. Their exceptional gratitude melted barriers between former antagonists.
West Berlin children told me, “We don’t have to have enough to eat. Just give us a little. Someday we will have enough to eat, but if we loose our freedom we will never get it back.” American style freedom was their dream—Hitler’s past and Stalin’s future, their nightmare.
I didn’t know it at the time, but some of the bricks under my wings were all that was left of the apartment that once housed a little girl of six. I was destined to meet her years later. She with her family had fled in only their night clothes down one of those streets the night of 1 March 1943. One hundred barrels of gasoline near their apartment were about to explode. Buildings all about them were aflame. You will feel the heat of the fires. Her account will place you beside her in the apartment cellar; often her only refuge during the almost nightly bombings. You will feel the dread of a little girl going to school each morning, wondering which of her friends would not be there; wondering when her time would come—not if, but when.
This incredible book is an absolutely riveting story of survival against all odds, and describes what freedom means in language one can fully understand. Inge is the little girl, now an author and proud to be an American citizen. Her description of events and people during the war, afterward, the Airlift, and her difficult path to America is unique. There are very few people alive who were so deeply immersed in each phase, and fewer yet with her mastery of the English language. Her beautiful descriptions put you there in person, and almost a hundred pictures from that period help the reader visualize what she is describing.
The story of her mother’s love is woven through the fabric of her life like a golden thread. Her father was captured at Stalingrad and was one of the very few who survived. He returned on foot to Berlin in 1945, seven months after the war was over, starved, barely alive, and not recognizable. Inge describes in her grandmother’s words the emotional reunion after he finally convinced her that he was her son.
Her mother engineered the family’s escape from Berlin on 3 March 1943, without permission, to the little country town of Straupitz. It was here in 1945 that the town was overrun by Soviet troops. You feel the anxious concern of her mother and Inge, now a tall ten–year–old. There was rape, stealing and a fight to survive. Totally innocent, Inge did not realize the danger she was in. Her description of the steps her mother took to protect her without telling her “why” are beautiful and humorous. For almost eighteen months she lived under Communist rule. Kind actions by some Russians, especially to the children, were not enough to dim her drive for freedom. She wanted no part of Communism.
In November 1946 they had to navigate the Communist checkpoints to move back to West Berlin. You feel the tension as they arrive at their final checkpoint, five hours after their Russian permit to leave the Russian Occupation Zone had expired, and they wondered if they would be turned back.
The years after the war were equally hard and the family barely survived. The time of the Blockade was especially difficult. Inge since age eight had the total responsibility of handling the family’s precious ration cards. She stood in grocery lines for hours at a time to get food before supplies ran out. She would often faint from hunger. Many starved during this period.
I began dropping handkerchief parachutes, laden with candy and gum to the children of West Berlin starting in July 1948. Sometime between then and the New Year I dropped a load of these goodies and almost hit Inge’s brother, Peter, but he didn’t get one. Inge’s account of his description of what happened is special.
I first met Inge in 1998 in Washington DC at a Berlin Airlift Veterans Association (BAVA) annual meeting. All of a sudden this beautiful woman comes up to me, threw her arms around my neck, gave me a big hug. There were tears streaming down her face. She was there to say “thank you” to all the veterans for their part, almost fifty years ago, in saving her life and the lives of 2.2 million other Berliners during the Berlin Blockade. She won the hearts of all the Airlift veterans at the meeting. Inge has become a member of BAVA. She attends all of our meetings to express her gratitude. I quickly presented Inge with her “Hershey” candy bar since she had not caught one in 1948-1949.
In my view, the real civilian heroes of the Berlin Airlift were the West Berliners. They slept in bombed–out buildings with little or no heat, little food, and very little electricity. They said they would never give in to the Russians. Inge epitomizes that spirit and the reason the Airlift succeeded.
Inge immigrated to America in 1954 but visited West Berlin again in 1962. One night she had no way of knowing that two of her East Berlin cousins were on their stomachs with their only possessions being the clothes on their backs, a shovel, and some barbed–wire cutters, headed to the canal that separated them from freedom in West Berlin. So many before had bartered all they had, including their lives, for a chance to be free—and had lost. Miraculously the cousins made it through. Three days later they related to Inge each challenge they faced in the process. You will relive each of these life and death challenges because Inge immediately recorded their words in a long letter to her husband which she has included in this book.
This is a wonderful account of very difficult times. Yet as you read Inge’s words you will find a person with a wonderful, positive outlook on life; someone that wanted no part of Communism, and truly is proud to be a citizen of this great country.
We are proud to have her as an active member of BAVA. She is a constant reminder to all the aircrews and all the ground personnel of Britain, France and the United States of why we were there.
You will learn, laugh, be edified and enjoy each exciting chapter. More significantly, you will better appreciate and understand the importance of the right to choose ones own destiny. This inherent implant resides in the soul of every human being, irrespective of borders or frontiers. This precious commodity does not come free. We recognize it as freedom, conceived by our founding fathers on the axiom, “In God We Trust.” Inge’s book speaks to this inherent need.
Gail S. Halvorsen, Col USAF (Ret)
The Berlin Candy Bomber
Known to Inge and the children of Berlin as
Uncle Wiggly Wings and The Chocolate Pilot